Marcos 12:6-8

The sending of the owner’s son constituted the supreme test for the tenant farmers. The tenant farmers in the parable may have believed that the owner of the vineyard had died and that he had only one son who was his heir. They reasoned that if they killed the son there would be no one else to inherit the vineyard and they could retain control of it. The tenants evidently threw the son out of the vineyard and then killed him (Matthew 21:39; Luke 20:15). Mark’s order of events (Mark 12:8) shows that his murder was also an act of rejection. [Note: Lenski, p. 512.]

The religious leaders certainly behaved as though God was dead. He really had only one uniquely beloved Son (cf. Mark 1:11; Mark 9:7).